


marks on my heart (are yours?)

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 01:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19347094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: By the time Regina had been crowned queen, she’d had six marks of heartbreak etched across her skin. By the time Emma turns twenty-eight, there are barely three marks that still show on her skin.





	marks on my heart (are yours?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalindasharmas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalindasharmas/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Maia!! A tiny bit late, but I did manage a little something for youuuuu <3

By the time Regina had been crowned queen, she’d had six marks of heartbreak etched across her skin. Only six, because the one that had been across the side of her torso had metamorphosized in time. Mother’s heartbreaks had been the same, over and over, and each renewed reminder of them had left the mark changed against her side. Now, it is– of all the cruel shapes it could take– a scar in the shape of a heart, jagged and red and poisonous. Regina looks at it as little as she can.

 

There are others, of course. A horse that had etched itself against her thigh when Daniel’s heart had been yanked from his body. A snowdrop of betrayal on her knee, small and beautiful even in its heartbreak. A strange green river that symbolizes a heartbreak she can’t remember. Heartbreak is written in her skin, is vicious and unrelenting, and she knows that by the end of her first night as queen, a new mark will scorch itself into her skin.

  
  
  
  


By the time Emma turns twenty-eight, there are barely three marks that show on her skin. A star on her wrist, all but faded. A bird against her chest that is scabbed over, that will never quite heal right. Emma is skilled at healing away heartmarks, at ridding herself of heartbreak by refusing to feel at all. There had been a new one for each foster family when she’d been young, and she remembers the way people had stared, the way children had giggled and prospective parents had kept their distance. No one wants a girl who keeps her scars on the outside.

 

Her third mark is on her abdomen, and it is the only one she’s had little success at forcing away. It’s an arcing sun that follows silvery, mostly-gone stretch marks, a scar that never lets them go away completely. Her third mark remains, open and sharp and blue, and Emma keeps her eyes averted from it when she is undressed. 

  
  
  
  


Regina has more scars by the time she comes to Storybrooke. There are dozens now, harsh and strong across her body, and she wears each one like a sign.  _ This is what you made me. This is who I am.  _ Heartbreak is in her every pore, is as lethal a weapon to her as vengeance. Regina doesn’t hide them, doesn’t wear makeup that promises to conceal heartbreak scars or wear long pants and sleeves to hide away the marks she can. She is unashamed. She is furious.

 

The scar she doesn’t expect is the one that comes on slowly, that builds just over her heart with every passing day. Henry avoids her, and it begins to darken, to grow to a perfect teardrop of deep blue against her body. Henry snaps at her, snarls at her like she’s the enemy, and it is purple-black, is garish when compared to the sharp, fine lines of her other marks. 

 

Henry disappears and reappears, storms past her with an  _ I found my real mom!,  _ and the dark lines of the teardrop begin to bleed.

  
  
  
  


Emma thinks she’s imagining it when she first sees Regina Mills. The woman is beautiful, of course, confident and poised and with a dangerous quality to her smile. If she weren’t Henry’s mother, Emma might have even made a move on her, if not for–

 

There are  _ scars _ , heartbreak marks that etch themselves across her arms and legs, that draw her skin in multicolored and unashamed stories. There is even a mark on one cheek, a white jagged line against skin a shade darker. It looks almost like a crown, and Emma has to force herself to look away.

 

“Do I need to be worried about you, Miss Swan?” Regina Mills asks, and Emma turns back to face her. There is a sharpness to her gaze, a layer that says that she knows exactly what it is that has captured Emma’s attention. She uses her heartbreak like a weapon, like a tool instead of something to hide away.

 

Emma can’t get away fast enough.

  
  
  
  


And yet, Emma Swan doesn’t leave. Not when Regina sends her away, not when she decides to go. Not when the curse breaks or after it, when a heartbreak mark appears spindly and twisting against the side of her neck. A mark of abandonment, Regina guesses, of the heartbreak of being around her parents again. It creeps up to the side of her cheek, dipping just above her jaw, and Regina stares at it when Emma argues to save Regina’s life.

 

_ Why, _ she wants to ask when the others are gone, when it’s only Emma and Regina and a magic hat in the mayoral office. She doesn’t. She doesn’t want to ask anything of Emma Swan. Instead, she says, “You have a new mark.” 

 

Emma brushes at it irritably. “It’ll be gone soon,” she says. “I get over things quickly.” 

 

“You repress them,” Regina shoots back. 

 

Emma snorts. “Better than punishing an entire realm for them,” she snaps, and there is no more compassion in her eyes for Regina.

 

But she still lets herself be dragged into a void to save Regina, and Regina falls back to the ground and doesn’t understand, not at all.

  
  
  
  


The mark on Emma’s neck does disappear once she stops thinking about what could have been and focuses again on what is. That’s her trick, and it’s been working just fine before  _ magic  _ and  _ fairytales  _ and  _ other realms _ and she doesn’t plan on giving up on it anytime soon. 

 

The scar on her abdomen won’t fade, though, even with months spent getting to know Henry and do right by him. There are too many regrets, too many reasons not to push away her heartbreak at the years that have been lost. She can tell herself that her parents had wanted her, that there is no reason for her to hurt over her destiny. She has more trouble when she thinks about giving Henry up.

 

She sees him again when she emerges from the well with Snow, when she can breathe again and she’s surrounded by family, and she can feel the mark on her abdomen burn. She looks up and catches sight of Regina huddled against a tree, breathing hard with the effects of some kind of magic, and she can’t tear her eyes away from her.

 

She wonders where Regina’s mark for Henry is. Somehow, she knows it’s there.

  
  
  
  


Emma accuses her of killing Dr. Hopper in a heated argument, and Regina is infuriated, is enraged and betrayed enough that she lifts her hands to throw furious magic at her. Emma freezes, eyes wide an instant before the magic hits her, and Regina doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand why Emma looks stricken, why she doesn’t move from her spot as her parents shout threats at Regina, why she is silent.

 

She understands later, once she’s disappeared in a furious haze of purple and reappeared in her vault. There’s a new mark on her palm, golden as Emma’s hair and in the unmistakable shape of a swan. She stares at it and  _ hates  _ it, because she doesn’t accept this. She hadn’t chosen for Emma Swan to matter enough to have her heartbreak etched on her skin. She  _ doesn’t  _ care enough about Emma Swan for her heart to break–

 

She glares at the mark on her palm through shimmering eyes for so long that she doesn’t hear footsteps descending into the vault. All she hears is the subdued, “Hey.” 

 

“Don’t talk to me,” Regina grits out. 

 

Emma is silent for a moment. Then she says, her voice quiet, “How could someone impersonate you like that?” 

 

“It’s easy,” Regina snarls, and the vindication doesn’t feel nearly as good as it should, now that Emma is here and looks at her with eyes Regina doesn’t recognize. “My mother used to do it all the time–” 

 

They both freeze, staring at each other, and Emma swallows and says, “Your mother.” 

 

It isn’t a question.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Regina goes undercover, plays the role of grief-stricken daughter as Mother plots and plots with her. Emma is her handler, meets with her in a secret place in the woods where they won’t be seen. The rest of Storybrooke treats Regina with extra scorn and a little bit of fear, and Regina avoids going out where possible. 

 

“Gold wanted to call in a favor now,” Emma says, pacing back and forth in front of Regina. “ _ Now _ ! As if I can leave this op to Mary Margaret and David. They mean well, but they’re not…well, subtle.” She scowls at an innocent tree stump. “I’m not leaving town until your mother does.”

 

“I don’t think she’d be affected by crossing the town line,” Regina says. “I was able to leave during the curse because I hadn’t been cursed. It wouldn’t take my mother’s memories.” She curls her fingers into a fist. “The only way to stop Mother is to kill her.” 

 

Emma tilts her head, looks at Regina askance. “Regina,” she murmurs. “We aren’t going to–” 

 

“She won’t give us any other choice.” A searing pain to her side at that pronouncement, and Regina claps her hand to her side without thinking. 

 

Emma is in front of her in an instant, her eyes wide as she sees Regina’s pain. “What’s– what happened? Did she hurt you–” She has her hands on Regina’s blouse before Regina can stop her, unbuttoning it gingerly. Regina doesn’t stop her. 

  
  
  
  


The first time Emma understands the breadth and depth of the scars Regina carries with her, it’s in the middle of the woods in the midst of a secret rendezvous. Regina is holding onto her side as though she’d been injured, and Emma’s mind goes blank of anything but horror and fury. Somehow, in the moment that Emma had seen her heartmark appear on Regina’s palm, she had begun to include Regina in the mental collection of people she considers  _ hers _ .

 

Regina would not appreciate it, but she stands limply now, lets Emma unbutton her blouse and stare in shock at the pattern below it. Her skin is a kaleidoscope of color, is alive with scarring that nearly glows in the light of the moon. Regina holds every ill committed to her on her body, every violation etched into her skin, is alive with resentment and fury and hurt. There is a teardrop on her heart that is so deeply colored that it is surrounded by furious red, and on her side–

 

There is a heart in jagged pink, and it is different than the teardrop. It seems to cut into the skin, seems to throb against it painfully, and Emma knows right away what it must be. “Cora,” she says, and it emerges as a hiss.

 

Regina looks at her with startled eyes, then says in a rough voice, “It’s none of your business.” But she doesn’t pull away when Emma touches the raw, angry heartmark, when she presses her hand to it as though it might somehow ease the pain.

 

When Emma looks up, she is very close to Regina’s wide eyes, and it seems as though the world itself might stop spinning if she doesn’t do something about it.

  
  
  
  


Emma kisses as though the world is on fire and this is their last chance. It doesn’t matter where they are– hiding in the woods together, kissing desperately; or stumbling through the vault with their lips locked– her kisses are always wrought with emotion, with need and desperation, with something intoxicating that Regina can’t resist. Regina trembles under her touch, aching for a connection to this world and to this woman, and weeks pass in a haze.

 

The heartmark on her palm never goes away, which she knows Emma doesn’t like. Emma turns over her hand when they’re curled together, kisses her palm and stares at it with unseeing eyes, and Regina can’t bear to explain to her why it is that every moment they spend together hurts even more. Emma is  _ good _ , is someone who has so much more to hold onto than Regina, and this isn’t– this isn’t love, no matter how much Regina might crave it. This will never be love for Emma.

 

Then Mother is killed. Mother is killed by  _ Regina _ , by a careful manipulation from Snow White that has Regina veer from joy to despair in an instant, and Regina’s side burns as though it might never, ever stop again. Her knee hurts, her scars in agony as never before, and she can feel the rage racing through her veins. 

  
  
  
  


Regina is furious, and when she’s furious she’s unpredictable. Emma knows it, but she still breaks into the mansion that night, climbs up the stairs to crawl into Regina’s bed. Regina lets her, unseeing and unreactive, and Emma strokes her side and kisses her temple and whispers,  _ tell me what you need. _

 

Regina says, her voice dull, “I want Snow White’s decapitated head on a stick. I want her prince dead by her hand so she understands what it is that I– why the hell are you here?” she demands, rolling over, and her eyes flash with fury. “I want your parents  _ dead _ . I want  _ you _ –”

 

She presses her palm to her mouth. The palm with Emma’s mark on it, and Emma wants to sob and doesn’t know why. She takes it from Regina, presses kisses to it, and Regina lays her head back against the pillow and weeps angry, lost tears. 

 

Emma kisses her heartmark, then kisses the one on her wrist just above it. She kisses others, presses her lips to each of the marks that scar Regina’s skin, and Regina lies still, very still, and lets Emma kiss each one. 

 

Emma hates Regina’s marks, every single one, every piece of pain that Regina won’t let go of.  _ Let them fade _ , she wants to beg her.  _ Let them go _ . But today, she only kisses them, gives them the audience that Regina’s been silently begging for for two lifetimes.

 

And she watches, as her lips brush each one, that each one lightens just a little bit.

  
  
  
  


Snow submits herself for murder. Regina can’t do it, can only remember that ugly scar that had torn across Emma’s neck after the curse had broken and can’t bear seeing it dig into her again. Instead, she points, victorious, at a heartmark that mars the perfect Snow White’s skin with Cora Mills. “You will  _ never  _ return from that,” she says, and tries to feel Snow’s anguish as a comfort. 

 

The snowdrop on her knees is still harsh and dark, though, still something she can’t let go of. Emma looks at her with disbelief sometimes, traces her marks as though Regina might someday heal them herself. “It isn’t healthy,” she pleads with Regina. “It isn’t a way to live.”

 

“And your way is?” Regina snaps. Everyone has scars, has a few garish marks to cover or to wear sheepishly. Emma has only one, and she hides it, flinches back when Snow comments on it and only lets Regina touch it. It’s dim now, the regret of losing Henry fading more and more with time, but it remains large and visible on her stomach. “How can you live without your marks?” 

 

“How can you live  _ with  _ yours?” Emma retorts, but it’s Regina’s palm she’s looking at, the golden heartmark that is bold and  _ Emma’s _ on it. “You can’t hold onto your anger forever–” 

 

_ Anger,  _ as though that is why her heartmark seems to get darker as the others lighten. Anger, as though this is from where her heartbreak stems. 

 

Regina laughs bitterly and kisses Emma, putting an end to the conversation.

  
  
  
  


Regina is captured by a figure from her past, had burned down a bean field and then disappeared. Mary Margaret is frantic, David is livid, and Emma is a little bit of both. Her heart wrenches and she can only think of Regina, dead or worse. 

 

“We’ll find her,” Mary Margaret says, and she looks despairing. “We need to find her. I owe her this–” 

 

“You don’t owe her anything,” David says reasonably. “None of us do. She’s the  _ villain  _ here. She put me in a coma– she took Emma away from us– are we really going to risk our own lives to save her?” 

 

Mary Margaret flinches. Henry, sitting in the corner of the loft and pretending not to listen, flinches, too. “We  _ have  _ to,” Mary Margaret insists. “After what I did to her– Emma?” she says, frowning, and her eyes go wide. “Emma, what’s wrong?”

 

“Mom,” Henry says, his voice strangled, and it’s only then that Emma knows that something really is happening. She lifts her hands and sees them: heartmarks, fading back into view as though they’d never been gone. Shapes on her arms, on her face, on her legs when she rolls up a pant leg to check, all of them darkening onto her skin.  _ Color _ , the sort of color she hates to see on Regina, all of it returning at once.

 

“Emma,” Mary Margaret says again, and she sounds frightened. “Have you always had–?” 

 

But she  _ hasn’t _ . She wills away her heartbreak, refuses to let it leave its mark, and she only remembers the marks reappearing once, in the midst of childbirth. It takes unnaturally powerful emotions for old, healed heartbreak to return, and she shudders in front of a mirror, stares at the colors on her skin and then shuts her eyes.

 

Henry says, his voice small, “Are you scared for Mom, too?” Emma can’t answer.

 

Mary Margaret looks at her as though she might understand something for the first time, and Emma averts her eyes.

  
  
  
  


Emma and her parents save Regina. Regina doesn’t know why. There’s an odd greyness to Emma’s skin, a strange cast to it when Regina awakens, and Regina wants to ask her about it but the words won’t come out. Emma sits by her bed through the night, and Snow watches them as though she knows a secret that– for the first time– she isn’t telling.

 

Emma doesn’t talk about that. She only gets Regina water and fumbles through Regina’s whispered coaching for how to help her heal. “It was never– I was never all that good at it,” Regina admits. “But I think you might have a knack.” She lays a hand over Emma’s, pressing it to her heart. “Close your eyes, and try to…to imagine what it is that is motivating you. Saving another life, or Henry’s…or Henry, or…” 

 

A warmth is spreading through her, a gentle thrumming that feels like a second heartbeat. Emma’s hand rests on Regina’s skin, and Regina wants to sob at how tender it is. Their eyes lock for a moment, like lovers instead of  _ whatever _ they are, and Emma rests her head against Regina’s stomach and continues to heal her, heal until even some of Regina’s heartmarks are beginning to fade.

 

_ Not beginning _ , she corrects herself, staring down at her skin, because too many of them are already fading. Emma pulls back, apologetic. “I’m sorry– my thoughts drifted–” She casts a guilty eye on the fading marks.

 

Regina tugs her back, roughly. “Do it,” she whispers against Emma’s lips, and the lightest of the heartmarks begin to disappear.

  
  
  
  


From the moment Regina begins to speak about the trigger, Emma knows that she’s going to sacrifice herself. It’s clear in the way she holds herself, in the sad smile she gives Henry. It’s clear in the way she lets go of two dozen heartmarks in a single instant. Her skin isn’t empty now, but there are fewer marks, only the deepest remaining. 

 

And that damned one on her palm that shouldn’t be there at all. 

 

Emma doesn’t  _ understand _ , doesn’t know what she’s doing to hurt Regina so deeply. At first, she thinks it must be Henry, but Henry hugs Regina tightly and the heartmark seems to grow only darker.  _ What is it?  _ she wonders as they wander through the mines.  _ What have I done?  _

 

But aloud, she only says, “You aren’t doing this.” 

 

“I have to,” Regina murmurs, and she speaks with frightening self-awareness, with quiet affection, and when she says  _ Let me die as Regina _ Emma feels as though she might herself break down. Regina is  _ hers _ , is someone to protect, is someone she–

 

Regina is holding out her hands and beginning the process of siphoning out the trigger’s magic, and there is nothing more that Emma can do but protect the rest of her family. And still, she turns back, her heart wrenching, unfinished business glowing like heat through her.

 

“Regina, I–” she begins, stretching out her hand, but Regina doesn’t even hear her.

 

When she stares at her hands, her left palm burning, she sees a pale purple heartmark taking shape on it.

  
  
  
  


_ You may not be strong enough, but maybe we are _ , and Emma is suddenly there with Henry, with Snow and David, with her damned heroic eyes and golden hair just the color of the heartmark on Regina’s palm. Emma holds out her hands to share the magic with Regina, and Regina only sees glowing magic twisting together, feels stronger than she’s ever been with Emma standing opposite her. 

 

Emma catches her eyes and there is warmth within her gaze, so much affection that Regina nearly misreads it as something more. But Emma mouths  _ hi _ and they’re cheating death together, cheating destiny to save the day without a sacrifice.

 

_ You may not be strong enough, but maybe we are, _ and the trigger is drained at last, falling uselessly to the ground. Emma laughs in disbelief, and Henry says, “You did it!” He’s beaming at both of them, and the teardrop on Regina’s heart throbs with a not-unpleasant warmth. Drained and exhausted, Regina drops to the floor, searching for the diamond that had been the trigger.

 

She pockets it, and Emma murmurs, an echo of Henry’s words, “We did it.” She holds out her hand to help Regina up.

 

“Yes, we did,” Regina breathes, and she turns to take Emma’s hand when she stiffens. 

 

There’s a heartmark on Emma’s palm, a glowing purple sun. Regina’s hand falls, and she stares at it, at a mark that hadn’t been there a few hours before.

 

Emma sees where she’s looking. “I thought we’d…I thought I’d lost you,” she whispers, right in front of her parents and Henry. As though she isn’t admitting the impossible. As though she isn’t saying that her heart could possibly break for– for– “I guess we match now, huh?” 

  
  
  
  


There is something, Emma finds, to holding onto heartmarks. To letting heartbreak spread over you, to consume you until you are little more than your heart. To staring at the mark and remembering not just pain, but the love it had taken to make the mark come alive.

 

There is something, Regina finds, to letting heartmarks fade, to seeing old pain and letting it clear the path for something new. To holding onto some but letting other heartbreaks no longer hold court over her body, consuming her until she is nothing more than pain.

 

There is something to matching heartmarks that clasp together, to kissing the woman you love in the middle of the mines in front of the people whose opinions matter most, to  _ love _ , plain and simple, and the scars that brighten and fade with it.


End file.
